THERE IS SMOKE HERE

There is smoke here. It arrived early and has not been assigned a cause. The misunderstandings travel inside it, careful and patient. They have been traveling for a long time. This is how things are delivered now.

The elected superiors have always loved us. This was never in question. The love was formal and arrived on schedule and we received it without hesitation, the way obedience receives its instructions. We thought about traveling to see them and the thought was sincere.

A glance from the archive is enough to constitute a record. Years go vague and motionless when they are observed correctly and we were observed correctly. The rooms of our lives were then catalogued by those who dared not enter them. A record was sufficient and was considered care.

Then, the fire came and became too terrible. The artist without tremor looked at the fire and continued and those who trembled were the only honest ones. We recognized this too late to say so.

For a time we were indifferent. Both of us. Sometimes aware. Sometimes indignant. But mostly indifferent the way a building is indifferent to weather.

You found the unstable places and etched into them anyway. Righteous signs. Indelible recitations. You said the radiance was real. You said the platform was white and clean and capable of holding what you placed on it. The others sang in the households. Soft and triumphant. Authority songs with good melodies. They are still singing. 

There is conceivably ( probably ) a line so straight it wakes the dead. We built toward it. We believed in its geometry. We wanted something absolute enough to justify what we had done in its name. I hope it does not go away. I do not say this without grief. I say it because we need more fluid and organic beings here. We need something that cannot hold its shape under pressure. Something that bends and moves and cannot be used as a measurement.

You know the earth is distraught.

Will you make another one when the penetration is done?